The MM library is a 2-layer abstraction library, which simplifies the usage of shared memory between forked and, in this example, strongly related processes under Unix platforms. On the first layer it hides all platform dependent
implementation details; allocation and locking, when dealing with shared memory segments, and on the second layer it provides a high-level malloc(3)-style API for a convenient and well known way to work with data-structures inside
those shared memory segments.

The library is released under the term of an open-source, BSD-style license, because it was originally written as a proposal for use inside the next version of the Apache web server as a base library for providing shared memory pools
to Apache modules, Currently Apache modules can only use heap-allocated memory, which isn't shared across the pre-forked server processes. The requirement actually comes from comprehensive modules like mod_ssl, mod_perl and mod_php,
which would benefit a lot from easy to use shared memory pools.

Before you decompress the tarballs, it is a good idea to make a list of files on the system before you install MM, and one afterwards, and then compare them using diff to find out what file it placed where. Simply run
find/* > MM1 before and find/* > MM2 after you install the software, and use diffMM1 MM2 > MM-Installed
to get a list of what changed.